Straightup: hands are the bane of my existence. Worse off, tauren hands are the Satan of my existence. I am struggling with this one, particularly nailing down *her* right hand and getting the perspective right. I want to keep the camera low, looking upward and giving the viewer the feeling of being completely overwhelmed by the tauren but the hands are just killing that feeling.
Any suggestions?
Replies
However, where do you want the viewer to look? At the moment my eye is drawn towards the stomach and the fur covering the breast. (excluding the thing she's holding) .
The lightest thing will be the part to attract the most attention, and hence you want to have this area where your area of interest is.
As for the lighting.
You might want to have some more shading on the skull, under the arm (our left, furthest away arm) as the light would hit that arm too.
Sadly I cannot do an overpainting as I've packed my wacom for a move But I will keep an eye on the thread so I'll try to explain if you get stuck
In regards to the shading, your lighting is looking 'correct', but I might just work on giving the whole image more form (although I'm personally a sucker for dramatic lighting, so it could also be a matter of personal taste). Aside form that, I second what Elithenia is saying about the torso being the most attention grabbing point at the moment. Take care to lead the viewer's eye where you want it; you're in control!
Really looking forward to more updates and seeing it in colour!
"I want to keep the camera low, looking upward and giving the viewer the feeling of being completely overwhelmed by the tauren"
At the moment your camera is not low. Based on the perspective given to the individual elements of the character I would say that you placed it somewhere around the level of the belly button looking straight on (that is to say : neither looking up or down). If you want to achieve the effect of the character towering over the viewer you would have to rebuild this drawing entirely. This involves having to draw almost all the elements of the character in a manner that you might not have memorized (what I mean by that is that you won't be able to rely on "memorized visual codes" for hands, face, mouth, and so on).
Now that's not a bad thing, and this is always a great exercise. Just keep in mind that the more you push the cleanup and rendering of the current sketch, the less likely you are going to be willing to rebuild it from scratch. That is more than anything else what is currently preventing you from achieving your initial goal.
Your line quality is great, but this drawing needs a lot more attention given to the underlying construction and structure of the character.
Thank you so so SO much for the feedback. I went and took @zachvance and @Elithenia ideas and pushed the dynamic lighting a bit more. I don't know about anyone else here, but I learned that I need to go outside of my comfort zone, particularly when it comes to lighting. I really do want to end up with that *pop* in lighting so I figured by darkening the dress and lower part of the image and having the majority of the lighter areas up top, I can get viewers to focus more on the face and skull. I took @zachvance 's advice and gave some harsher shadows closer to the light source around the skull area and less so on the fur shadows.
Thank you also @pior . Next time, I will build a better base sketch. I can *maybe* try to fix it a little with Warp but for now, lessons have been learned